


A Jigsaw Puzzle

by notenoughtogivebread



Series: Klaine Advent 2013 [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: Assault, Childhood, Missing Scene, Other, Sadie Hawkins Dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4347353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenoughtogivebread/pseuds/notenoughtogivebread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Klaine Advent 2013. Blaine growing up and figuring some things out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Jigsaw Puzzle

When Blaine was 8 years old, his brother Cooper got him guitar lessons for Christmas. The younger boy had started piano earlier that year and, of course, showed promise. But Cooper knew that the guitar was a much better way to get the girls’ attention.

When he was older, Blaine came to understand that Cooper was really looking out for two people he loved with his gift. He was going off to college and he figured his old tutor could use the work. The guy was not exactly a great advertisement for making a good living in music.

At first, Blaine was a little scared to go to lessons. Going to guitar meant walking into town by himself to a shabby music store, winding past the big boys in flannel shirts or Baja jackets who hung around the counter, and pushing through the beaded curtain—who still had beaded curtains in 2004?—to Jason’s Lair. That’s what the sign on the wall said, anyway, but it was really this sorta cozy room that smelled funny, like smoke and candy mixed. And Jason was this old guy, dressed like the boys in the store, but with a blonde mustache.

The whole thing was alarmingly different from piano lessons at Maestro’s big house and from his sessions at the fencing salle, from his otherwise polite, well-ordered life. But Blaine soon grew to love his afternoons spent in the Lair. Jason knew music, always called Blaine “my multitalented multi-instrumentalist”, and had loads of stories about Cooper that no one at home had ever heard. He also had a thing for songwriters from the ‘70s. James Taylor and Jackson Browne. Bonnie Raitt and Carole King. His favorite was Jim Croce, who mostly seemed to write songs about bad guys getting beaten up.

Blaine never came to love the guitar the way he loved the piano, but he still liked going to lessons, even if by middle school, some of the guys in the front of the store elbowed each other and snickered as he passed in his preppy clothes. Jason had figured out by then that Blaine was never going to use his musical talent to get girls. He wasn’t all that subtle about it, but Blaine appreciated the Elton John and Queen sheet music all the same.

He was never more glad for those lessons than in the weeks he spent in bed after the Sadie Hawkins eighth grade dance turned into “the incident.” His beloved piano might as well have been on the other side of the moon as on the other side of the room, but Mama left his guitar by the bed.

He got the anger behind Jim Croce’s words then, as he banged away awkwardly on the guitar while he lay in traction:

“He’s Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,

Baddest man in the whole damn town.

Badder than old King Kong,

Meaner than a junkyard dog.”

Sounded like Andrew and his football goons. Blaine liked the ending of the song best, and on long spring nights in the hospital bed set up in the den, he sang it fiercely and loudly, picturing himself as the hero who brought them down.

“Well, the two men took to fighting,

And when they pulled them from the floor

Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle

With a couple of pieces gone.”

He liked to picture his fist crunching one’s nose, his fencing foil finding that space between another’s ribs, his strong legs swinging hard and bringing a third to his knees. Except, honestly, it hadn’t gone anything like that. He was the one left like that jumbled jigsaw puzzle.

And it wasn’t really the Leroy Browns of the world who had scattered the pieces of his life, though they sure helped, the assholes. No, it was his own doing; he, who had felt so brave and grown-up standing before Mama and Dad and boldly saying, “So, I suppose since I know, it’s only right that you do too..”; he, who had been thrumming with excitement and daring asking Kyle to the dance; he, who put his small body between his friend and the other boys.

When he finally was out of traction and out of bed, he found that most of the pieces of his old life were gone, never to be recovered. He wouldn’t go back to Heritage Middle School; he’d never see Kyle again, or not for years anyway. He needed to work on his balance some and build up his left leg before he could go back to the salle, at least to compete. And he would have to stop going down to Bean Music because his parents were actually sending him away to boarding school, to Dalton.

It ended up being okay. He built a new life at Dalton, and by 10th grade he felt on top of his game: the popular frontman of the Warblers, a furniture-climbing maniac with old Hollywood good looks that charmed the ladies. And late at night, in the darkened gym, he led another band of boys in the pursuit of another kind of excellence at Fight Club.

He really felt like all the puzzle pieces that made up "Blaine" were back in place, but there was one missing. He only really learned that the day he heard a soft melodious voice interrupt him on the South stairs, calling out, “Excuse me. Can I ask you a question? I’m new here.”


End file.
